


A Reign of Frogs

by qwerty



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Kinkspiration Challenge, Knotting, M/M, OMFG IT'S A WIP GET IN THE CAR, accidental near-mass-murder, destiny awaits, frog-kissing, magic everywhere, major humanity, minor bestiality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin's batty Great-Uncle Kilgharrah discovers the joys of email and sends him a message that leads to a great deal of fuckery. And possibly also fucking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Merlin Receives A Message of Great Import

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kinkspiration Challenge Round Six: Knotting. Or, started for it anyway. Uh. I realised I really needed to try to get some work done on this when AO3 deleted my unposted draft for sitting around being ridiculous and not-complete. (Un)Fortunately, I had it saved on the computer as well.
> 
> AT THIS POINT KNOTTING HAS NOT YET HAPPENED, SORRY.
> 
> In case you missed the warning in the tags: OMFG IT'S A WIP GET IN THE CAR.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people simply should not be allowed access to the internet. Merlin receives an email that makes him wish for an age before computers.

 

> From: Kilgharrah The All-Knowing <camelotoracle@dragoninsight.com>  
>  To: not a legendary old fart thanks <merlin.balinson@camelot.net>  
>  Subject: VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING YOUR DESTINY
> 
> My Dear Young Warlock,
> 
> Do not delete this email!!! Before 12 hours pass from the time you read this message, you must kiss the 6 frogs that will present themselves to you. Do this, and you will find yourself the recipient of an unbelievable blessing. Deny them, and A DREADFUL CURSE will befall you.
> 
> Affectionately,
> 
> Your Great-Uncle Kil.

Merlin pressed his palms over his eyes and counted to ten slowly, then looked at the laptop screen again, as if that would change the contents of the message. He clicked back to his inbox and stared blankly at the message headers. And then he checked his email again to see if any follow-up emails apologising for the stupid joke would appear. After about five minutes of staring and refreshing, a quiet ping notified him of a new message.

> From: Kilgharrah The All-Knowing <camelotoracle@dragoninsight.com>  
>  To: not a legendary old fart thanks <merlin.balinson@camelot.net>  
>  Subject: ADDITIONAL NOTE RE: VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE REGARDING YOUR DESTINY
> 
> Young Warlock,
> 
> It comes to me that I have neglected a very important detail in the previous message. Be sure to kiss them properly on the lips, not the head or back! Your Great Destiny will not be won by unnecessary modesty, my boy.
> 
> Affectionately,
> 
> Your Great-Uncle Kil.

"Do frogs even have lips?" Merlin asked aloud, drumming his fingers nervously on the table. When he found himself starting to wonder if the next message would inform him that he should kiss the frogs properly, with tongue, he slapped himself on the forehead to derail that train of thought and shut down the laptop, and as an afterthought, switched off his iPhone as well lest more detailed addendums to the frog-kissing instructions should turn up via email or text. If he didn't know about it, Uncle Gaius couldn't raise a disapproving eyebrow at him for not heeding advice.

He covered his face with his hands and sincerely regretted having introduced his Uncle Gaius to the internet and email, and by extension - an unasked-for direct consequence - his self-proclaimed Great-Uncle Kil, who camped on Uncle Gaius's property and by turns expressed great interest and deep scepticism towards technology.

If it had been anyone else, if it had even been Uncle Gaius, who sometimes experimented with strange herbs and mushrooms to stranger results, Merlin would have happily deleted the stupid message and forgotten about it in less than the time it took to click "Trash". But Great-Uncle Kil was not someone you laughed off.

As a Grand Master of Divination, even with his unparalleled talent in obfuscation, Kilgharrah commanded obscene fees for his services as an augur, and his baffled clients ignored his cryptic warnings at their own peril. Though sometimes it was really more that the luckless sods had no idea what he was warning them about than because they didn't want to take the advice they had paid for. However ridiculous his words might seem on the surface, they were not to be disregarded lightly.

Merlin had been five when he first met the dragon. He had been chasing Will about the playground when Kilgharrah had landed out of a clear blue sky, announced that he was adopting Merlin as his Great-Nephew, and that not all shelter was shelter. The boys had run away screaming, and dragged Hunith to see the enormous dragon though she had been resting on a bench under a tree because of a headache, and less than a minute had passed before a large bough broke above the bench and fell right where she had been sitting. Even if the dragon hadn't been a renowned oracle, this act of saving his Mum's life was reason enough for Merlin to treat whatever his Great-Uncle Kil chose to say with the greatest respect for the rest of his life.

Kissing frogs, though. It was definitely not on his list of things he wanted to do now that he had finally cleared his final exams and was enjoying his final holidays before he would have to go away to university. He hadn't even kissed - well. Kissing was just...

He kissed his Mum and Dad, of course, and he used to kiss Uncle Gaius on the cheek when he was a toddler and went about kissing everyone - even Kilgharrah - he'd kissed Will as a joke when Will was being a jerk about Merlin befriending Freya and Gwen because they were Avalonian and differently sexed, and Gwen had once kissed him in the fever of an unexpected first heat, but he'd never kissed anyone on the lips with intent.

He should have taken Gwen up on her offer then. He was a healthy young human boy, and she was an attractive if sometimes diffident alpha girl; they could have had uncomplicated, no-strings attached educational sex with no danger of accidental reproduction until she found her true mate. If pressed, he might have admitted to a little natural curiosity about Avalonian physiology himself (who wasn't?), particularly the infamous knot that alphas had, even the girls. But no, he wanted to wait for true love, and now he had... frogs.

He could hide out at home and hope the promised frogs wouldn't find him there. But then Will would probably decide to start a new frog collection or something like that, and bring them to show him, and he'd somehow end up having to kiss them in front of Will even if he would rather risk getting A DREADFUL CURSE than have to kiss frogs. Why an unbelievable blessing but A DREADFUL CURSE in all caps, anyway? It didn't seem fair.

Merlin stewed in his room for a few hours, determinedly playing solitaire with a real deck of poker cards and eating crisps while trying to ignore the queasy feeling growing in his stomach. When he wasn't stopping himself from casting an anti-amphibian ward on his room, he was trying to convince himself that since Kilgharrah's email said the frogs would present themselves to him, there was no need for him to go out looking for frogs to kiss. Maybe the frogs were just a metaphor and he was worrying himself over nothing. He didn't really believe that, however. It was rare for Great-Uncle Kil to lay out the future in such bald terms.

It was impossible to focus, and after the twentieth time he lost count of the number of cards while trying to lay out a round, he scrunched all the cards together and threw them at the wall, then pulled on his oldest hoodie (in case of mud or frog slime) and marched forth to face his destiny. Better to meet it head-on than go through ridiculous contortions trying to avoid it and then still fail to escape, right?

Where would one go to find frogs? Or should he just do what he normally would have and wait for the frogs to present themselves to him as promised?

While he glared at his bicycle and debated whether to take it with him to the park and risk running over a vital amphibian by accident, he became aware of soft, weak-sounding splashing sounds. A feeling of DREAD crept over him as he turned, slow and reluctant.

Someone had covered the rainwater barrel that stood at the corner of his house. There was a hastily scrawled note on a sheet of paper lying atop it, soaking through and barely legible with the spreading wet ink blots that had been letters.

> **DEAREST ELENA, THERE HAS BEEN A MINOR MAGICAL ACCIDENT. PLEASE DO NOT FEED THEM TO HERONS OR FISH OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT EATS FROGS. MOST DEFINITELY **DO NOT EAT THEM!!!** BE BACK SOON. XOXOXO.**

He'd recognise Sophia's writing anywhere. She had been a year ahead of him and Freya, but while she had been in school, she seemed to think that his being a librarian made him a perfect drop-off point when she didn't want to stay after school but wanted to pass study notes to Freya. He also remembered her penchant for conducting dangerous experiments on the unsuspecting. The Sidhe had a rather tenuous grasp on the concept of magical ethics at best, but as Uncle Gaius said, at least they weren't malicious. Most of the time. Merlin eyed the rainwater barrel warily. Presumably, Sophia and Elena were coming back for the contents of the barrel anyway. But how soon was soon? The splashing noises seemed to be getting quite faint.

Merlin steeled himself and yanked the cover off just in time to see an enormous yellowish frog start to sink, exhausted. _Can frogs drown?_ was his first panicked thought. Never mind, it was sinking and that had to be bad.

Merlin cursed, thrust his entire arm into the full barrel and came up with a slippery handful of a very solidly-built frog, pulling out the bottom edge of his hoodie to form a pouch to drop the poor creature in. It wasn't alone either; Merlin scooped up a small brown frog clinging to the side of the barrel next, and the rest renewed their struggles as well, seeing that rescue was imminent.

He had indeed collected six frogs of varying colours and sizes. He was drenched, and his destiny was in this soggy pouch full of miserable-looking amphibians, which he held as far from his body as he could. "I hate you, Great-Uncle Kil," was all he could think to say.

"Ribbit," croaked one of the smaller ones with pretty brown markings, and coughed up a dead fly. Into Merlin's hoodie.

"Urgh."


	2. Merlin Is Not A Frog-Whisperer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do with half a dozen frogs that you shouldn't eat? Put them in a pot, obviously.

Somehow, he wrestled the kitchen door open and shouldered his way in without dropping the frogs, and if he had any doubts that the pathetic menagerie he had rescued were no ordinary amphibians, they were laid to rest right away by the panicked chorus of croaking that ensued when he pulled out a large pot. He kicked the kitchen door shut and dropped the pot to roll away with a wild clatter, bundling them all against his stomach to keep them from escaping as wild visions of frogs hopping everywhere and into the garden and road and being run over or eaten flashed before his eyes.

"Shut it, damn you lot, I'm not going to cook and eat you, all right?" He applied a little discreet magic to seal the wriggling makeshift sack. "I'm not Elena, calm down. I repeat, not going to eat you. Shush, stop struggling, it tickles!"

When they quieted down again, he exhaled, long and slow, and opened his hoodie pouch. The frogs blinked up at him fearfully. "Okay. I know you're not real frogs. I'm not going to cook you. I just want something that I can carry you in without dripping everywhere, all right? Stay calm."

There was a subdued ribbit, and a chirpy sort of sound, and then a mixed chorus of froggy noises followed.

"I'm taking that as a 'yes', then," Merlin said, and carefully unloaded the contents of his hoodie onto the kitchen table, wincing at the thought of what his Mum would say if she saw the mess. He pulled the sopping hoodie off altogether and dropped it in the sink, then turned to stare down his new frog collection. "You're a sorry lot of princes, aren't you."

A mid-sized frog with vivid green and yellow coloration let out a startled sort of "ribbit". All the frogs shuffled about nervously, bumping each other for space in the middle of the table.

Merlin bent low in front of the green-and-yellow frog, puckering up his lips and watched it sit frozen in terror and blink at him like he was a car bearing down on it, then turned abruptly and plopped himself on a chair, laughing at the disgruntled looks on their little faces. "Yeah, right, I'm not going to kiss you, at least not until we've exhausted all the possibilities. There's..." he glanced up at the kitchen clock and frowned, "eight hours, according to my Great-Uncle Kil. I have no idea what happens at midnight, but I'll get you fixed before that, I promise. Apparently it concerns my future as well. My eyes are up here," he said firmly when he realised that the frogs were collectively staring at his chest. For some reason, the looks felt disapproving.

He plucked at the wet 'Kiss Me, I Don't Mate For Life' T-shirt clinging uncomfortably to his body and grimaced. "Don't mind the shirt, it's my friend Will's stupid idea of a joke. Come on, let's take this somewhere more comfortable," he said. He picked up the pot he had dropped and started dropping frogs in. They made frightened little croaks, but didn't try to escape this time.

They seemed heavier without the strength given by his initial burst of terror when he thought they were drowning, even taking into account the large metal pot they were in. He heaved the pot into his room and set it on the floor by his bed, then pulled off his wet T-shirt and tossed it over the pot of goggle-eyed frogs before pulling out a towel and fresh clothes.

Being clean and dry and dressed in non-embarrassing clothes improved his outlook on the situation immediately. He kicked aside the wet clothes and towel, then pulled the T-shirt off the pot, dropping it with the rest of the wet things. Seating himself on the edge of his bed, he beamed down happily at the frogs.

"So, who are you guys? Girls? You can't all be princes." The largest frog croaked and the green-and-yellow frog promptly stepped rather deliberately on it, climbing atop its head to get closer to Merlin. "Besides, there's just the one Avalonian prince in this district, and even if he's kind of an oblivious prat who keeps leaning on my locker when he's all sweaty and sticky after football practice and then leaves smelly junk behind, he's got his bodyguards and friends. Between the lot of them, they should have enough brains to keep out of trouble with Sophia. It's not like she's some kind of sneaky mastermind anyway."

The frogs answered his attempt at a joke with a resounding, unblinking silence.

"Tough audience," he muttered. "Well, are you Sophia's friends, or Elena's? Or are you just some luckless randoms? Can you talk? Croak twice for no."

More silence. The frogs stared at him, then side-eyed one another, the pretty frog that had spat up a fly nudged the small brown frog who nudged it back, the two biggest stepped on each other's feet awkwardly, and then all of them focused their attention on the green-and-yellow frog. Merlin stared at it too. It croaked once, sullenly.

"You're the leader, I take it. Can you actually understand me?" Merlin asked. "I thought you could. If you can't talk, croak twice. If you can... talk!"

The tawny, polite-looking frog beside the leader frog croaked once, twice, then started up a series of shrill chirps and gargling and croaks, then blinked, looking embarrassed.

"Uh. I didn't get any of that?"

The tawny frog belched loudly. They all blinked and stared at it. It sounded a bit like "Ahem."

"Um," Merlin said. "Is that a no?"

"Ah," the frog said, and burped. "Ah un o-o-oh." It made a sound like someone clearing his throat.

Merlin sat back in his bed. For all that he knew they weren't really frogs and had been encouraging them to talk, he hadn't really expected to hear words coming from their mouths. Suddenly Kilgharrah's ominous warning seemed very real and immediate. He was actually going to have to kiss them at some point. Or be afflicted with A DREADFUL CURSETM.

"Oh. Ok. So you didn't know if you could talk. It looks like maybe you can," he said, and the frogs exploded in a cacophony of terrible noises as all of them tried to start talking at once.

He didn't want to kiss any of them. What did his destiny have to do with anyone dumb enough to be enchanted into a frog by Sophia and nearly eaten by Elena? They had to be working off absolutely foul karma, since Elena was such a sweet girl, frog-eating habits aside, and would be absolutely heartbroken to know she had eaten a person.

"Wake me when you can communicate sensibly," he said, and crawled into bed, jamming a pillow over his head.


	3. In Which Frog-Kissing Is Serious Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you try to put off the inevitable, the inevitable is bound to disapprove.

Something cold and wet splatted on the back of his neck. Instantly awake, he yelped, "Will, you bastard!" and sat up, and the wet thing fell off his neck to drop on his bed with a loud thump. "Oh, you," he said, seeing that it was the pretty speckled frog. And then he woke up some more. "Oh! Are you all right?"

It waved a little webbed foreleg at him weakly.

"Sorry," he said, picking it up and stroking its back gently. "You're not hurt, are you? Where are your --" he started, and the frog's tongue snapped out and stuck to his lower lip for a second, and fell off. Merlin opened his palms and let it drop back onto the bed. He wiped his mouth slowly.

"Urr. Sorry about that," said a warbly voice beside him. "He gets excited, doesn't think first. Swallowed a fly when we just changed." Merlin turned and looked at the polite tawny frog who had started trying to communicate with him first.

"You're talking," he said, stupidly.

The frog bobbed its head, and continued talking, enunciating carefully. "Difficult. Not all of us can do it."

"That's amazing." Merlin sucked in a deep breath and looked around him. The frogs all blinked back at him, guilty fake-innocent looks on their froggy faces at his growing horror. "Why are you all in my bed? I'm supposed to kiss you, not sleep with you lot."

"Sorry," said the large reddish frog that had been quiet until then. "We were cold. We didn't do anything." The yellow-and-green frog smacked the pretty one that had tried to tongue him, then climbed up and sat on top of it. The other frogs all nodded earnestly, edging together in a tight cluster of slimy horror. 

Merlin glared at them, still suspicious, glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand and rose to pick up his wet things from the floor. "Stay here, I'm just going to throw these in the wash and get some dinner before my mum gets back. We're going to have a chat about your condition."

"Hungry," said the pretty frog, looking woebegone.

"I'll bring you some flies," Merlin said coldly, and left the room.

Along the way, he collected his hoodie from the sink to throw in the wash together, and once the washing machine was clunking along on its own, he directed some rags to give the kitchen table table and floor a cursory swipe, and racked his memory for all the transformation spells and curses he could remember reading about, and possible parallels to Sidhe magic, which no one but the Sidhe knew much about.

For which matter, neither Sophia nor Elena seemed to be very good at it either.

The biggest spell he remembered Sophia working involved turning a pumpkin into a rather small, squashy and sticky carriage for Elena during her short-lived enthusiasm for all things princessy (just long enough for Elena to realise she would have to brush her hair and wear shoes). She had also made Will fall madly and briefly in love with an antique suit of chainmail armour at the museum during their last school trip before she graduated. He had abandoned the idea of eloping with the armour before he'd gone three steps with it. True, Will still went back every week to gaze at the shiny chain links wistfully, but as long as he wasn't trying to make off or out with the suit, Merlin considered Sophia's spell to be no longer in effect.

All things considered, the frogs were very lucky to be alive, mostly in their right minds, and out of her hands, though Merlin still had no idea what the whole lot of them were doing at his house. The problem was figuring out the correct spell or curse and removing it, and the true consequences of failing to do so in time.

If he could ask Uncle Gaius... Uncle Gaius would tell him to just kiss the frogs and get it over with. What about Kilgharrah -- no. He checked to make sure his phone was still off. The frogs were already getting funny ideas, if the pretty frog trying to stick its tongue in his mouth was any indication.

He could try to ask Elena if Sophia had told her anything about the frogs, but Elena didn't do magic as far as he could tell, unless you counted her ability to swallow large frogs and catfish whole without batting an eyelash, and ride like a rodeo star on anything with legs, including, once, the big, quiet Avalonian student in his school who followed the Avalonian prince about like a puppy or possibly a bodyguard. (He never did find out what their dispute had been about, but Percival was yelling 'Uncle' and 'you win, you win' in less than three minutes after she mounted him.)

Sighing, Merlin found the frozen pizza he'd hidden from his mum in the back of the freezer and scowled at himself as he shoved it in the microwave. Could frogs eat pizza? Despite his harsh words when he'd left the room, and the frog that had tried to kiss him aside, he didn't really think they would, or should, eat flies. Not that he wanted to catch flies for them either.

What about raw fish? He had some frozen prawns and sliced fish they were supposed to use for sushi; those should be safe. He took them out, and started when he turned around to see the green-and-yellow frog sitting on the table behind him, watching the rags whisk about it.

"I just wiped that table," Merlin said, as the rags fell still.

The frog cleared its throat with a burp. "You have magic. But you are not a Sidhe." It eyed the rags suspiciously.

It spoke more clearly than the other frogs had, but there was an odd, erratically nasal tone to its voice, as though it was trying to disguise its voice even though he was willing to bet its own mother wouldn't recognise it right now.

He chose to ignore both the implied question and the frog's eccentricity for now. "I told you to wait in my room. I've got some fish here that should be safe for your lot to eat. Give me a moment to thaw and cut this into smaller bits."

The frog hopped up to glare at him while he unwrapped the fish and set it on the counter. While he washed his hands, it demanded, "Why don't you just kiss us and get it over with?"

Merlin concentrated on cutting the fish into neat, equal strips with a little more force than absolutely necessary. "What makes you think kissing me will actually change you back into whatever you're supposed to be? Do I look like a princess to you? What do you know about magic anyway?" He let the knife carry on with the cutting on its own, rinsing fish off his hands, and bent low before the frog again, this time offering his cheek. "Kiss me, see what happens."

If a frog could be said to bristle, despite the slime and all, this one did. It made a small, angry sort of thrill, then bumped against his face. Merlin closed his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again. The frog was still sitting there, _seething_. Its throat inflated, deflated; then it gathered itself and spoke again, in sharper tones than before. "Is this a trick of some sort? A trap? What do you want from us? I'm warning you..."

Merlin straightened to his full height. The knife came down and made the final cut with a loud thunk, and the frog flinched momentarily, falling silent. "I should be asking: who are you, and what are you and your merry band doing in my home? What were you doing to make Sophia turn you into frogs? What spell did she use?" 

All the while, the knife loudly scraped the fish strips into a serving dish behind him, and the frog's wide eyes kept blinking between him and the knife, uncertain which was the bigger threat. Merlin bared his teeth at it, the unfriendliest grin he could manage.

"In case you didn't know, my Great-Uncle is Kilgharrah. The famous Augur. He sent me a message this morning informing me that I would meet you, and that something very bad would happen if I didn't --" he could not help grimacing in distaste, "kiss you. But I've been thinking. Physical transformation isn't easy magic, even worse when it's transformation of a living thing. I don't know what kind of magic was used on you. It could be a simple curse, with a single condition for lifting it. Or it could be -- I don't know, something else. He didn't say what kissing would actually do to you. Do you understand me?"

The frog stared back at him and made no reply, only shivering a little. He gestured at the plate of fish to float up, and waved the hot pizza onto another dish, letting both follow behind him at shoulder height. Merlin scooped up the stiff frog gently, warming it in his cupped palms. "Let's get back to your friends. When did you last eat?" 

"We had brunch about eleven, this morning. Just before we were changed." Just before Merlin woke and checked his email. Had they been in the barrel that long? Without thinking, he stroked its head with his thumb, and it leaned into his touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Horrors. An update, late, and no knotting has happened as yet. They are all still frogs. Sorry.


	4. The Naked Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which many things are revealed which Merlin would really rather not have revealed.

"All right," Merlin said as he took the stairs at a jog. He paused at the landing mid-way to shuffle the frog to his shoulder and collect the floating plates from behind him, though he jostled them slightly in the process and nearly lost the pizza. The frog watched him trying to juggle the plates, silently judging, he felt.

"I don't want my magic to be common knowledge," he said, feeling defensive. "I'm enough of a freak with my great-uncle being who he is, plus..." he managed to get the pizza to slide more or less back into the centre of its plate, "the Avalonians." He grimaced. "Ready?"

 

"What?" the frog croaked, settling down and gripping his shoulder firmly. "What about the Avalonians? You have friends among them and you don't treat them any differently. Unlike most humans."

Merlin thought about it, biting his lip in concentration as he continued up the stairs. "I do like them. They're very nice people, well, considering how they started as, uh, alien invaders. They've tried to integrate with humans, we have a more or less equal vote, crazy protester types don't get tossed into piranha tanks or tortured..."

If frogs had eyebrows, this one's would be in orbit. Not unlike Uncle Gaius's. The resemblance was a bit disturbing. "And yet?"

"...they have really strong feelings about magic, you know? They have that ceasefire with the Sidhe, but it's been twenty years, and King Uther still sounds like he might order another Purge any day. I watched the debates, and it's not just the older generation. Even the prince... and he's still a student, like me. A kid."

"Urp," said the frog, and looked like it might be suffering indigestion or constipation, or both.

Merlin shook his head at it and looked back down. "Even Gwen -- she's lovely about everyone -- she freaked and ran away when Freya fell under that horrible curse last year, and Freya didn't do anything to bring it on herself; she just got caught in the crossfire between Sidhe enforcement and a rogue wizard. If I hadn't managed to lift the curse secretly..."

"I understand," the frog answered stiffly, and turned its back on Merlin.

That gave Merlin an unhappy sinking feeling in his gut, for some reason. "Shit. You're Avalonian, I take it," he asked as they stopped at the door to his room.

"I won't tell," the frog said, then the murmurings from inside Merlin's room sank in.

"...even if you don't want to call it territorial marking," one of the frogs was saying, its voice uncertain and unfamiliar, "you cannot deny what the act signifies."

"We are in such deep shit," announced a voice Merlin was certain belonged to the pretty frog.

He'd left the door ajar when he left, but Merlin kicked it in anyway, storming in and nearly throwing the plates on his desk without even stopping to clear his books out of the way. "What's this about territorial marking? So help me, did you pee on my bed?"

The frogs all stared at him, pop-eyed and open-mouthed.

He hurried over to check for wet - well, wetter - spots, and seeing no suspicious stains, spun back to glare at them. "Fess up! If not the bed, where? The rug? Oh gods. Mum's pot?"

"We didn't pee in your things, sir," said the biggest frog meekly, but managed to look extremely shifty as it did.

"You didn't pee... Am I going to find little frog poops hidden everywhere?" Merlin raised his hands to clutch at his head in distress, and nearly dislodged his passenger. "What did you lot do? Tell me!"

"We need to come clean," said the tawny frog suddenly. "If you lot don't want to tell him, I will."

"Please," Merlin said, and checked under his desk. "Just tell me where it is. I promise not to get mad."

He ducked his head behind the door, and the frog riding his shoulder huddled into his neck, clinging on for dear life. "Sorry," he told it and plucked it off his shoulder, and it let out an angry croak as he set it down with the others.

"I promise we really didn't make a mess anywhere," protested the pretty frog. "Can we eat first?"

Merlin had no resistance to sad-eyed animals, even slimy ones, and half a dozen tragic frogs was too much for his sensibilities even with the threat of possible frog waste somewhere in his room. Which was why he had to sigh and sit down. He wiped his hands on his jeans and picked up the plate of fish. "C'mere."

The frogs, after some initial scepticism that was quickly overcome by their hunger, all demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm for the salmon and tuna slices, not so much for the prawns, which lent strength to his suspicion that he had himself a pack of transformed Avalonians, since Gwen and Freya had identical reactions when he took them to their first sushi counter. 

He fed them all by hand, making sure each got a fair portion of the fish and feeling like a very odd sort of zookeeper as he did. When the final scrap of fish was gone and they all turned down the last two prawn slices, he turned his back on them and set to work on his by then lukewarm pizza, swallowing the last mouthful of rubbery crust with determination before he turned back to face them, seating himself cross-legged on the floor to get closer.

"I'm done. Start talking."

The lead green and yellow frog settled down with him, pressed against his foot almost in his lap, but said nothing. Merlin looked down at it, confused. Then the tawny frog hopped to sit squarely before him and cleared its throat, an apparent self-appointed spokesfrog.

"We're sure that this isn't a malicious spell. Sophia did not mean us any harm."

That was... a revelation. Merlin felt certain his mouth was hanging open to a ridiculous extent by how dislocated his jaw felt. Somehow he managed to close his mouth and find his voice. "Sophia turned you into frogs and shut you in a barrel of water."

"It was clearly an accident, and she was quite upset about it. She was supposed to only -- ah."

Merlin looked down at his froggy foot-accessory, which was glaring daggers at the tawny frog but staying quiet. "Ah? I mean. You really think that? She used magic on you, and nearly killed you."

"We were asking for it," said the pretty frog with a happy burble to its voice. "Or at least one of us was! You see?"

He had no idea what he was supposed to see. All the other frogs took the pretty frog's pronouncement with a rather pained air. 

Then the small brown frog leapt on it with an inarticulate cry of rage. "It was your fault! You suggested he talk to the crazy Sidhe and got us into this whole -ribbit- mess! We should have brought him to a hospital instead, not encouraged his -- uh --" It looked at Merlin's foot and fell silent.

"Go on," said the green and yellow frog, which Merlin was starting to think of as _his_ frog, and this realisation pained Merlin deeply. It felt like defeat, like he was surrendering to Great-Uncle Kil's idea of DESTINY. "Encouraged my what."

The large reddish frog interposed itself smoothly between Merlin's frog and the two smaller ones. "The important thing is, we are fairly certain that this is a straightforward and harmless spell, easily lifted, so if you could help us..."

"I don't want to die," whimpered the largest frog.

"This was all my fault," Merlin's frog said. "I swear on my honour, I won't do anything."

Merlin pinched the bridge of his nose and counted silently to three. "Hang on, let me see if I understand it right. You... approached Sophia for help. She decided that she should turn you into a frog, but accidentally..."

"She sneezed," the pretty frog piped in helpfully. "Right when she was chanting the last word of the spell."

"And turned you all into frogs. Then she abandoned you at my house." The frogs bobbed their heads at him in unison. "I don't know what to say. You couldn't ask someone else to do this?"

"Best if as few people know of this matter as possible," said the reddish frog, grave.

The tawny frog hopped into his lap. "We should make sure the spell works correctly before, well. You should start with me. I'm dispensable."

"You are not!" Merlin's frog said hotly, pressing cool and wet against Merlin's foot. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"You're certain?" Merlin lifted the frog in cupped hands. It swallowed. 

"Yes, I'm ready. Do it."

He steeled himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, and touched his lips to the frog's.

It was like kissing a current of foreign magic -- _Sidhe_ magic, with the underlying sense of whimsical air and water shifting about him, then being sucked down and grounded by his own magic as the bright sense of life in his palms warmed and swelled, filling out and dragging his arms down with solid weight, gentle lips moving against his own.

Merlin opened his eyes and found he had a lapful of -- "Lance!" Lancelot from his physics class, and Gwen's longtime crush. And he had a double handful of Lancelot's arse, while Lancelot rested his hands on Merlin's waist and regarded him with calm amusement. "Lancelot! What are you doing here --" Merlin sputtered, then registered the most important thing. "You're naked!"

"So I am," Lancelot agreed mildly. "Mind if I borrow some clothes?"

He waved Lance towards his cupboard and took in the hopeful, expectant looks of the remaining frogs. "You -- you're all naked!"

"Yes," said the pretty frog, leering. "And all yours."

Merlin felt his mouth work uselessly for a few moments. "You -- no clothes -- It never happens this way in fairy tales!"

"It's much more fun like this, surely," said the pretty frog, and Merlin's frog croaked angrily.

"My room is full of naked people." Merlin cast wild eyes about the small room, imagining it filled with five faceless, very naked figures and Lancelot. "My dad is going to kill me!"

Merlin's frog sighed deeply. "Can you at least turn the rest of us back into actual people before you continue panicking?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A direly late update. We're close to the end now, at least?


End file.
